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So the not so of that national average memorial is a place where people can place a plaque for their loved one family member.

What's interesting about us is that one of the few memorials in the United States that actually you can be living or they have passed away.

So it's also a great opportunity for somebody wants to have a plaque to commemorate their family and actually they can have a veteran's honor ceremony and they can actually show that family member their plaque on the Mount Soledad Memorial itself.

We have over 5200 plaques with room for about a thousand more and it tell stories, everything from the Revolutionary War to our current conflicts around the globe.

I think, unfortunately, that everybody thinks about Memorial Day and just thinks about it as a three day holiday, which it should not be.

And there's a lot of our friends and family members that have lost people in battle.

And basically every single day of the year is Memorial Day for them in some way or another, that they're always have that missing part in their heart.

And when it's a clear, clear blue skies, you're going to walk all the way down to Mexico, all that to Orange County, all the way up to Catalina Island and East County.

And it truly is one of the best sites to see San Diego from.

That was so great what we learned in that video.

Phil, let's learn a little bit about you.

So tell me how its started, your career and what you're doing now.

So I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., no relation with the military, with my folks down there.

But what I did have was a grandfather down in Florida.

There was a chief petty officer in the Navy and retired a number of years back in the seventies.

And he really instilled a sense of like military service, community service, dedication to the country.

One of my favorite photos I have is when I'm just wearing a pair of shorts out in his front lawn.

He's on the flag and misleading with my horrible bowl haircut.

Gosh, it's still mad, but my parents let me have that haircut years ago.

But, you know, so he got me coming into the military.

I went to Penn State for an ROTC scholarship, was originally Navy switched to the Marine Corps just because everywhere I went to the Marines were saying, hey, we support the grunts, the aviation aviators saying, we support the grunts.

The logistics folks are saying we support the grunts.

It was all about that ground force.

So I went to the Marine Corps, the 12 years the Marine Corps.

I was a Harrier pilot for a while as a forward air controllers.

So those were the guys on the ground, the girls on the ground calling in the strikes to get the bad guys.

Sometimes a very close proximity to our friendly forces.

And so did that for a while as well.

Did a lot of commuter relations and operations, and then just enjoyed flying.

And so because of all of those different things and working in the community in San Diego, it led that I had gotten a number of folks saying, Hey, we'd love you to join organization at Mount Soledad, and so join that board back in the 2016 time frame and been with them.

And now the vice president mounts all of that National Veterans Memorial down there in La Hoya.

Absolutely love the place.

We've got over 5200 plaques up on the walls and that's both living and deceased.

So it's pretty awesome when a when a family member friend would get a plaque and they get to show the plaque off to that person if they're still living.

We have veterans honor ceremony and it's really awesome to get that family honoring that veteran up there.

Absolutely.

One that it's one of the best location, San Diego, up up there on top.

That's all that.

Or if you're flying a biplane upside down with me, that's also a good way to see San Diego sometimes, too.

I think I'll stay on ground.

I'll have to work my way up to being upside down.

But I mean, I am just impressed by the work that goes that's involved in putting on these events.

I mean, Memorial Day, which is the video that we just showed right now, and you are planning for Veterans Day.

And so how do you find the people that you want to.

I wanted to say specialize, but wanting to identify wanted to give them a special recognition.

How do you find those people?

I've got some awesome brainstorming team.

So at Mt.

Soledad, we've got our board of trustees, but then we have like a smaller group of us that are basically our event planning committee.

We've got a couple of ladies that work in our office that are phenomenal rock stars.

And then Chris Epstein, she was a former FBI agent and she is always my brainstorm person.

And so she's always great about thinking up some ideas for this upcoming ceremony.

I think I actually might have picked this one.

It's always we're always brainstorming together, so you never know.

But for Veterans Day this year, honoring Nurse Corps, so the Army, the Navy and the Air Force Nurse Corps.

And so we're really excited about that one coming up, because we do have a large Navy nurse Corps contingent in San Diego.

My wife was a Navy veteran as well.

And we're reaching out to try to get some other folks to come out to that.

And for Memorial Day, we will host usually up to about 1300 folks.

But we are this year, right about a week and a half before we have a private ceremony, we finally convince the city and county let us do a bigger event.

So we get like 800 folks in a very quick manner, which took a lot of differences in planning.

And we expect by about seven 800 for Veterans Day.

And we're excited to you know, the San Diego elected officials have been very supportive of us.

The business leaders that are there.

Awesome.

The military leadership, Marine Corps, Recruit Depot, San Diego, where they train all the Marines.

Well, they also have an amazing band that comes in place for us each time they've got their color guard, they've got the rifle team, if we do a 21 gun salute.

So, you know, it's our event committee, but we're always very open about everybody else, like, Hey, throw me your ideas.

And there's a lot of veterans that I work with and other events.

If it's with Honor Flight San Diego, which gets the World War two Korean vets, they fly them to D.C. to go to the memorials and see those.

Okay.

And now there are and there'll be start in Vietnam, I think they said, for next year.

And then you've got folks that were just like honoring Tom Rice's hundredth birthday, jumped out of an airplane onto Coronado and had a fabulous event for this World War two veteran.

So a lot of those folks that are leading those different events, you know, they throw ideas out there and it's awesome that we had positive energy, good folks doing the right thing in the community.

And it just really reflects and I know we're in L.A., but it's still America's finest city in San Diego.

But I really do think it reflects upon making it even better.

Well, and I was I was just shocked because, like you said, San Diego.

But Mt.

Soledad, I had never even heard of that.

And just to get the word out in the last minute, you still had a crowd that shows me how many people support that.

And so in your opinion, because now you are running this, in your opinion, what can we do to continue to make this a successful event?

Every Veterans Day.

Every Memorial Day.

Every time you have a special occasion.

Well, one thing that's awesome about the memorial there is that it's open 3 to 65 days a year.

We basically open up the gates at seven, I think closes at 10 p.m. at night.

And so you can come there.

Just enjoy yourself.

You know, I when I lived in Pacific Beach, just out there, I'd run up to Mt.

Soledad, get the great view, run back down.

So I got a great workout and then I would take the moment to read a plaque or two and learn about what their stories were.

So honestly, for me, even if it's Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or any day of the week, they just come up and see it because it really is a beautiful sight.

You can see down to Mexico, you can see out to East County, the mountains, Mount Laguna.

You can see all the way up to Catalina Island when it's a really clear day.

So it's a pretty awesome it's about 800 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

And honestly is if then if you want to reflect and have a peaceful moment of tranquility.

Some of the city property that's right there has a nice overlook and we see people doing yoga out there.

We see people meditating, we see people singing, playing music.

I mean, it's just it's a nice place to be up there.

And honestly, hopefully they come up to the memorial and then also just take them on reflect.

We have docents that are awesome that will talk about the monument or the memorial and tell you some stories about how many Medal of Honor recipients we have, how many presidents we have out there.

Here's an actor that was veteran like Jimmy Stewart.

So it's pretty cool just to go up there.

And it's a learning, but it's also a peaceful place to wow.

And and I love that you have those two things that definitely anyone.

There shouldn't be a reason why you can't come up and visit it.

My other question that I wanted to ask, because you talked about so much in that one, too, but I wanted to talk a little bit about educating our young people about that.

And you said anyone could come up there, but how can this actually educate our children as well, too?

Because there are a lot of children now that have been born.

We just had the 20th anniversary of 911.

Just don't know.

And so what would your advice be to educators or teachers out there about how they can bring their kids up, too?

That's a great question.

Prior to, unfortunately, and around the March 2020 timeframe when they were shutting down, we actually were having groups come up there.

So we would get notification either from elementary school, middle school, high school.

We also might have like a different like keep it officers in the Navy, they may want to do an event up there or something like that and learn about what's up there.

And so just merely contacting our office to say, I would like to bring my school up there.

We'd like to walk around.

I usually give out at least 30 minutes up to about an hour because one thing is, I know kids have a short attention span.

I've got a short attention span, so I know how that can be.

So we do want to keep it educational, entertaining and also something that they can snap in their mind quickly.

So it's merely just contacting our office, which Soledad.

Memorial dot org is our website and it's got the information on there.

But we love hosting people.

We I mean, we've had people want to do weddings up there.

We've had people like say, well, play music part of it city property, part of it's our property.

But even if they're just visiting for City property, then they look at that, they look at that and I'm like, You know what?

I need to go learn about that too.

And those docents are great.

We will go help out and educate as well.

And we have some of the bigger groups like I said, we have a a big group coming up on October 24th that's going to be honoring the Warrior Foundation Freedom Station, which basically helps those wounded warriors.

That after they've gotten out of the hospital and that transition to the civilian life, you know, a lot of those men and women, you know, they need prosthetics or they need extra care, They need help if they finding housing, that transition to the civilian world, which I help out as well, they need help in that way.

And so the Warrior Foundation, they go to a fundraiser about 200 motorcycles, hopefully driving down from Orange County, Irvine, and up there at the Mount Soledad, We've got a band will be there.

We have a national anthem singer, hopefully fly over and honor those wounded warriors that have done so much for us so we can help that out even further.

Oh, that's so you've gave us so much information and you actually opened up another opportunity for us to go and support our military.

So thank you so much for that.

So before we end, our conversation is there anything else that you would like to share with us that our audience should know about what you're doing or how they can support?

Again, going to my world dot org if they want to get a plaque.

We have 5200 plaques up there and we've got room for 1000 more on our current walls.

So our plaque sales have been escalating a little bit because the walls are starting to get full.

We will hopefully build a couple other walls.

We're still figuring that whole process out.

But is yeah, just to go, Soledad Memorial dot org Learn more about the organization, come down to visit it.

Seriously, it's one of the most beautiful locations if you're ever down in San Diego County area.

And then those big events, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, there's a lot of stuff in San Diego goes on during Veteran's Day.

There's got Fleet Week, San Diego, the USS Midway has been an amazing partner.

The San Diego Veterans Day Parade will hopefully be going on.

And so there's so many opportunities like that whole week of Veteran's Day.

There's something going on San Diego that you can learn, be entertained, and also be educated the same time.

Wonderful.

You should be a spokesperson for the city.

That was wonderful.

Absolutely wonderful.

Well, Phil, thank you so much.

I mean, first of all, thank you for your service, but thank you for using your passion to help others, especially our military.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

And come back as I continue my conversation of how to use your passion for your career.

Chef Alexander Ray's.

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Welcome to America's Test Kitchen.

At Home.

At Home at.

Home.

At home.

At home.

This year, we're bringing it all back home today with great new recipes.

It's cheese time.

I hated to fish from.

I was a kid.

Ingredients and gear.

Here's money.

Your eye and your favorite test cook.

Today I want to talk about my.

Tank cooking in their own kitchens.

America's Test Kitchen at Home.

It's really good.

My name is Chef Alex Reyes.

I am the founder and chef here at Salty Culinary Academy.

Started saw culinary academy seven years ago.

We were in a smaller kitchen in Arcadia.

I had just come off of being the lead chef instructor at the world famous Le Cordon Bleu School in Pasadena.

They went out of business, They closed, they went back to Europe.

They don't want to be in the United States anymore.

I had to reinvent myself.

I really got the bug for teaching.

I was really enjoying the teaching process.

I decided to open up my own cooking school and kind of bring the 25 years of experience that I had of cooking to the general public.

We've been doing recreational classes for adults.

We offer probably about 20 different classes right now.

We do Mediterranean, French, Italian, Thai, Cuban, Peruvian, all different classes.

We do baking classes as well that just the general public can come in and take a class.

Usually the classes are about 3 hours long.

We were on target in 2020 to have our best year ever for the classes were full every night.

You know, lots of people coming through the doors.

And then COVID hit.

Hopefully one in six restaurants will not survive the pandemic.

California restaurants appear to be faring even worse.

We had to kind of reinvent ourselves.

We were very close to kind of just folding up and letting this place go.

And then we decided that the community needed some meal prep services in the area.

There's a large community of senior citizens in this area and kind of hipsters and millennials that just love having a plate of food delivered to their front door.

We started a business called Bistro Box Los Angeles, and we've been serving the community here, Monrovia and the San Gabriel Valley for the last six months.

So the way a bistro box works is that we take a weekly menu, we put it on to our website, one item per day, for example, today is grilled salmon over parsnip puree, served with a mélange of vegetables, a soup and a salad.

And you also get a dessert.

And then you go on to our website at Saute Academy dot com.

You choose your portion and we prepare it and deliver it to you.

Or you can do curbside pick up here at Santee.

We're averaging anywhere between 30 to 60 meals per day that we deliver to the community.

People are really enjoying the food.

I got a compliment the other day that we've been doing this for six months and we haven't repeated a meal yet.

So every day is a creative process of just deciding what the menu is going to be and people are really enjoying it.

The foodies in the area are really enjoying it, and we do a great summer camp here and we teach kids life skills.

You know, I always tell the kids there's only going to be one thing you do at least three times a day for the rest of your life, and that's eat right.

And so if you can feed yourself, I think that's an amazing gift that I can give to my students, is the ability to teach them how to fend for themselves and survive, You know, whether they're in a college dorm, they're engaged in getting ready to be married.

They're moving on to their life.

Cooking is really a life skill that you can take with you all over the world or, you know, for the rest of your life.

Chef Alex, thank you so much for being here.

And you have just done an incredible pivot over the last year, but you weren't always a chef.

So I would like to know, when did you decide that you wanted to turn your passion for cooking into your career?

Well, I've been working in the restaurant business since I was 14, started off as front of the house, you know, waiting tables, busboy.

Then I moved into bartending, so I kind of figured out the front of the house was fun, but it wasn't really fulfilling my creative need.

The creativity is happening behind the swinging doors in the kitchen.

So at that point it was finishing high school and deciding what's next for me.

And I decided to go to cooking school and I went to the world famous Le Cordon Bleu School in Pasadena.

I wanted to go to the one in Paris, France, when my parents couldn't afford it.

So I decided for Pasadena, California, which was a much closer to my home.

And I did very well there.

I found a niche that I thrived in.

It felt very comfortable having grown up in restaurants my entire life.

It felt like a natural fit for me and graduated top of my class and at that point had just kind of the passion took me over.

You know, it was completely one of those things that I couldn't fight anymore.

I was always looking for something else to do with my life.

You know, I have an engineer who's a father.

I have my mother, you know, was in health care.

And I always thought I was going to go down that road.

But the moment that I stopped fighting, my passion of being in the restaurant industry was kind of an illuminating moment in my life.

It felt really good to just give in and submit to what I really enjoyed doing.

And I love that you keep mentioning passion because that is what this episode is all about and that's why you are so perfect for this episode.

Because when you have a passion, sometimes you hit adversity and you talked about adversity in the video, but also too, did you have did you have some adversity when you decided to just go out on your own because you're leaving the security of probably the restaurant you were already in and starting your own path?

So how did you deal with that.

Leap of faith?

Right.

It's the scariest thing you'll ever do, is taking that leap, you know, that placing that one foot off the air, off the bridge there.

But it's one of those things that if you don't try it, you'll never know.

You'll never know if you can do it.

So, yeah, I collaborated with my wife, who's very supportive of me after after having worked in the restaurant industry for years and the security of hotels and just big corporate environment, I decided to go on it on my own and I had a supportive wife and my children were in support of me and I never looked back.

It really was one of those things that you just kind of, you know, there's no failure is not an option, right?

Failure is not an option.

You're not only have your family counting on you and your friends, but the community When you when you announce to the community that you're coming, you've got some fulfillment to do.

You need to make sure that they see that you're going in the right direction and that you're going to provide the product that you say you're going to provide.

And you mentioned that community.

So let's talk a little bit about that, because you are part of the community in Monrovia and you've chosen that community to have your business in How important is that to have that community to choose the right community when you have your passion?

Absolutely.

Monrovia is a great city.

We raise our children there.

Our children go to school.

We're very involved in the community.

I'm on a couple of committees for the city of Monrovia.

We donate time to the schools.

We donate money to or different organizations.

Uh, tonight I'm having an event for the Rotary Club coming in, and it's partially a cooking class for them, but it's also a fundraiser for the Monrovia High School Marching Band.

So proceeds will go to the marching band.

So I find that, you know, if you are good to the community, they'll be good back to you.

They'll they'll support you, they'll spread the word and they'll really take care of you and make sure that you get to where you want to be.

Well, and that's really good advice, too, because a lot of people don't know how to they have this passion.

They're thinking, oh, I want to turn it into a career, but they don't know they want to do it in this certain community, but they don't even know the first steps to take to make sure they're part of that community so that they can flourish.

So that's really great advice, too.

And you mentioned children a lot.

And in your video you talk about teaching children to cook.

And so I'm just making the assumption that, you know, health and nutrition with our ch with the cooking classes that you have right now.

And you mentioned I think you also mentioned you were going to have a camp as well.

What advice would you give to parents out there, too, because it's so easy now to just, you know, go through the next fast food place.

What advice would you give to parents of reasons why their children should learn to cook for themselves?

It's a life skill.

It's an absolute life skill.

I always you know, I have summer camps and I have lots of kids classes going on and such.

And I always tell the kids, there's only one thing you're going to do at least three times a day for the rest of your life, and that's eat.

And then I do this little project with them where I have them.

Okay, So if you have breakfast at Starbucks, that's $5, right?

Maybe if you have lunch at, you know, Olive Garden, that's another $20.

If you have dinner out at Chipotle, that's another $10.

So if you add that all up, that's your that's your car in high school.

Right?

You could you could have purchased the car.

You know, something that a goal of yours could have been had with that money.

So it really is a life skill to teach these children how to function in the kitchen, not to be afraid of things.

What's the worst thing that can happen?

You could burn something, right?

That's really I mean, hopefully that's the worst thing that could happen.

Although I've had some fires in the kitchen is something that you.

Probably have with your career.

But yes, but you're still here.

So they all turned out.

Yeah, but I just want to demystify the kitchen.

I don't want children to be afraid of, you know, I grew up with my mother and my grandmother and they were very good cooks, amazing female chefs in the kitchen.

And I was always at their skirt, just kind of sticking my foot.

I never forget they're sticking my finger in the sauce and tasting it, and my mom would smack my head, Don't do that, you know?

And so I wasn't fearful of the kitchen because I was allowed to be exposed to what they were doing.

Whereas a lot of children nowadays, my parents, they tell me that their parents, they don't, you know, go to your room.

I'll call you when dinner's ready.

And that's really not the way it should be.

Food is culture.

Food is sharing, right?

I feel that there's no better gift that I can give anybody than a beautiful plate of food and and share it with them.

So at my house, we make sure that we all sit together at the table all at the same time.

It may not be for an hour, maybe ten, 15 minutes, but we all share our experiences with our day.

And I think that's a good time in this busy world that we're in.

I think dinnertime, at least dinnertime is a great place to catch up.

How was your day?

What do you have going on tomorrow?

What's what are your dreams and aspirations as well?

Right.

What do you what do you where do you see yourself going?

And it's just a 15, 20 minute catch up with your children and your family and friends.

And then on Sundays, you should have that nice long dinner with all your family and friends as well.

That's kind of something we like to do.

We like to go to mom's house and everybody participates in, you know, putting together a recipe and we all share it.

And that's a longer dinner.

That's a longer process.

Well, and I'm going to continue because you mentioned Sunday dinner and Sunday dinners.

That's something that, you know, stopped over time.

And so let's just say someone's watching and they're thinking, wow, now that we are getting out of this pandemic and more people are getting healthy, maybe I'd like to start having family dinners.

What what is your advice, the first step that person should take to start this tradition again?

Well, you know, people get overwhelmed with cooking because they feel like they need to know everything about cooking and they need to know 50 different recipes.

It's not true.

I always tell people, learn five recipes.

That's all you need, right?

This five days in the week, you've got five groups of friends maybe.

And if you can nail five six for recipes and keep getting better at those recipes, you know, as the years go on, maybe modify them a little bit.

Right.

So maybe one day you add dried cranberries to your salad, or the next day you dry some cheese.

You can always modify things.

So don't be afraid of bringing a dish, you know, to a gathering and be proud of it.

And you know, it takes some time.

Also, ingredients are, you know, very important.

Make sure that you're putting a lot of love into shopping.

The shopping process is a complete process where you're going shopping, you're finding the appropriate ingredients for your recipe and then take some time to put it together with the help of your children and your family, your friends bring it.

Presentation matters.

Bringing in a beautiful platter.

Put it on the table and then step back and let people enjoy what you just made.

I'm one of those people who I cook all day long.

I cook all day long, and I don't even eat with my friends and family because I like to watch them eat first, right?

I want to see the reaction that they get when they eat my food, and then I'll jump in and kind of have dinner with them.

But it really is a gift that we're giving people is the gift of food.

I think it's amazing.

Wow, that is such a great advice.

I can see the teacher in you.

This is why your business is so successful.

Before we end our time today, can you think of maybe a piece of advice that you could give to people that are still afraid to step into the kitchen?

Because we have a lot of generations that are still afraid to do it?

What would you just say to them?

Well, like I said earlier, the worst thing they could do is is fail on the recipe.

Write.

My son the other day was cooking with us and we were making dessert.

We're making creme brulee.

And the recipe calls for a quarter cup of sugar.

Right.

Cream relates a lot of sugar.

Yes.

Well, he put a quarter cup of salt and we didn't know that until we actually tasted it at dinner.

Right.

You wouldn't know the difference.

No, you do.

Yeah, you don't.

You can't see it.

And, you know, he was embarrassed and he was shy.

And it was our job to tell him, don't stop trying.

Don't stop cooking.

Anybody can make this mistake.

It happens to professionals, It happens to amateur cooks.

And we appreciate that You gave it a good effort, that's all.

So don't be afraid to try things.

And and that's with anything in life.

Just give it a try.

And worst thing you can do is fall down and fail.

And the key to life is getting back up and trying it again.

Yeah, that is wonderful advice.

Well, thank you so much for your time and telling us a little bit about how you were able to keep your passion when you had to pivot.

And you're doing so many wonderful things now and I'm sure people will be following you and they'll definitely want to have an event at your place because I know I want to have one too.

So they may be seeing me there as well.

Thank you again so much.

You.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on, everybody with Angela Williamson.

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